Study shows living together far more frequent than marriage in first unions

More couples are choosing cohabitation over marriage than ever, and a 19-year-old woman on a bench in front of Oxnard College said she understands why.

She wanted to talk but wouldn't give her full name. This is a trend she knows a little too well.

She told her parents she may move out to live with her boyfriend. Now they're freaking out.

"All the teen pregnancies," she said of their worries. But she sees it as a way to test a relationship that started less than two years ago.

"What if you end up getting married and you find you can't even live with them?" she said.

In a 1995 national survey, about 34 percent of women age 15 to 44 said they lived with someone instead of getting married in their first relationship living with a partner. That number grew to 48 percent of the women in that age group from 2006 to 2010, according to government survey data released this month by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The study shows relationships involving couples living together lasted longer than they once did and led more often to children. It says living together was the most common choice for what researchers called a first union.

Twenty-three percent of the women said they married first, a revelation backed by falling marriage rates. Nearly 29 percent said they had not lived with a spouse or partner.

The numbers don't surprise women, men, marriage counselors, scholars or even the evangelical pastor who sees the trend as more evidence of straying from biblical teachings. Diane Gehart, a professor of marriage and family therapy at CSU Northridge, cited anxiety about commitment and a growing perception that marriage is temporary.

"I have grown women and men in their 40s and 50s saying, ‘I don't believe anyone is meant to be together for life,' " said Gehart, who also runs a marriage and family therapy practice in Thousand Oaks.

Money may be a factor, too, and not just because of the struggling economy and the lower cost of living together.

"Divorce is expensive and messy," said Kristi Walsh, a marriage therapist and psychoanalyst in Ventura. She suggested people may choose cohabitation because ending it is easier.

But ask men and women at Oxnard College about the trend, and they describe living together outside marriage as a testing ground.

Nydia Fabian, 22, hasn't had to make the choice yet. But when she does, she'll likely live with a partner before they get married.

"That way you know every aspect of them," she said.

Angel Vazquez, 20, of Camarillo, knows people who move in together because they had a child together. He said most moral barriers to living together have evaporated and that he'd do it, too.

"I really would," he said. "That's how you get to know the person."

But there's a problem with the theory of cohabitation as a way of dipping a toe into marital waters. It doesn't work, say the experts who are backed up by numbers.

About 40 percent of women in the new study said their first experience at living with someone shifted to marriage within three years.

But a study released by the National Center for Health Statistics a year ago shows the odds of marriage's surviving 10 years or longer increased if the couple did not live together before marriage.

"It's just the wrong test," Walsh said. "They're testing whether or not they can get along and have a shared life now. It doesn't test the long-term capacity for the relationship to absorb and adjust to the changes that life brings."

The study shows that women without a college degree were more likely to live with someone in their first union than graduates. White, non-Hispanic women were more likely to choose cohabitation for their first union than Hispanic women. Asian women were the least likely to live with a partner outside marriage.

About one of four women of all races said they had lived with a partner by age 20.

"Clearly, the idea of marriage and the expectation of marriage has changed over time," said the Rev. Jan Christian of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura, adding that people no longer see marriage as an automatic. "There isn't the loyalty to institutions that some previous generations have had."

The 23-year-old student with the "Ask me about Jesus" key ring at Oxnard College said religion is only one of the reasons he doesn't like cohabitation.

"If you end up having a pregnancy, you want to get married so you can raise the child properly," said Miles Trippler, of Oxnard.

Valerie D'Attile, a 29-year-old student, thought about living with a man once. Now, she feels relief because she didn't.

"Definitely, it wouldn't have worked," said D'Attile, who is married and in a different relationship. But she has no problem with the concept and hesitated only slightly when asked about children born outside of marriage.

"As long as a child has preferably two parents that are available everyday, that's great," she said.

People live together because it's easier to make ends meet, said Angela Morrison, of Oxnard, a surgical technician who has been married 24 years. And, yes, they lived together first.

"It's reality," she said.

By the numbers

• 70 percent of women with less than a high school diploma lived with someone out of wedlock in their first union.

• 47 percent of the women with a bachelor's degree or higher did so.

• 22 months was the median length of a woman's first cohabitation.

• 19 percent of the women experienced a pregnancy in the first year of cohabitation.

• 9 percent of the women had lived with someone by age 18.

Source: National Survey of Family Growth, women ages 15 to 44, 2006 to 2010